first gigs!

[Clyde Hollinger]

Charles,

It sounds to me like you're right on target.  When I started, two hours was
relatively standard for even a simple tuning.  Now I'm frequently in and out
of the house in an hour.

My responses:

It usually takes about fifteen seconds for me to retrieve a mute from the
bottom of the piano.  If you couldn't spare that much time, you were *very
much* in a hurry!  <G>

Since you live in New York, *any* piano tuned during this exceedingly long and
very cold winter will be even sharper than normal in the summer, unless the
humidity is controlled in some way.  This winter I am finding nearly every
piano much flatter than normal, even if I tuned it in March a year agoand even
if the piano has a history being close to where I tuned it a year ago.  So I
do an awful lot of pitch floating.

If the piano is located directly by a heat source, that is going to make the
problem even worse.  Whenever I find this situation, I inform the customer not
only of the problem with tuning but also that this may end up causing
expensive damage, and I suggest they move it to a better location if they can,
or at least try to shield the back of the piano from the heat behind/under it
as much as possible.  You might want to tell them that also.

Regards,
Clyde Hollinger, RPT
Lititz, PA, USA

Charles Neuman wrote:

> I had my first two "real" customers recently (i.e. paying customers who I
> didn't know). I learned a few things:
>
> 1) Both customers wanted me to be done after about 1.5 hours. It took me 2
> hours to tune one piano and to fix a slow key. On the other piano, it took
> me 2.5 hours to do a 120 cent pitch raise and a fine tuning. So in the
> future I think I'll warn ahead of time how much time I need.
>
> 2) Since I left in a hurry, each customer got a free mute in the bottom of
> their piano. From now on, I'm tying two mutes together with string.
>
> 3) It's all about the unisons.
>
> 4) About that 120 cent pitch raise: As I was closing up the piano, I
> noticed heat from the electric baseboard heater right behind the piano.
> What's going to happen in the summer? Will the piano be 120 cents sharp?
> The fact is, the piano hadn't been tuned for 7 years, so much of the 120
> cents might be from that. I wonder how much is from the dry heat, though.
> The piano was surprisingly in tune with itself for not being tuned in 7
> years.  Kimball spinet. Not so bad. There was a little rust on the
> strings, but I used a tiny amount of CLP and also dropped pitch before
> raising. No broken strings.
>
> 5) Using Tunelab for the pitch raise: You need to set your tuning curve
> before doing the pitch raise. But measuring inharmonicity is not accurate
> when a note is 120 cents flat as the harmonic structure is different than
> it will be when the note is in tune. So, you can rough tune the notes
> you'll meausure. Problem: You don't have a tuning curve yet, so how do you
> tune them? The Tunelab manual suggests using a generic tuning curve to
> rough tune the notes you'll use to measure inharmonicity. Since I haven't
> made a generic tuning curve yet, what I did was just took the measurements
> as the notes were (but matching up the piano's C# with Tunelab's C). Then
> after the pitch raise, I measured inharmonicity again and made a new
> tuning curve for the fine tuning. It worked out well. The fine tuning
> didn't require too much change, expect maybe in the top octave. But
> everything else was amazingly close.
>
> 6) It's hard work. But then you get paid! :)
>
> Charles Neuman
> PTG Assoc, Long Island
>
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